Many and various cultural tools in choral conducting have been identified in the analysis:
a) Sight/vision and listening. Sight/vision (in both inner and outer sense) is the choir director’s tool both for seeing what is going on in the room, and to predict what is needed in the choir’s work and what consequences different instructions might have.
Listening is used by the choir directors as a tool to listen to what is sung and how it sounds musically, and to what is said and communicated in the dialogue with the group. Listening is also an inner tool in preparations and in the practical work in the rehearsals. By listening, the choir director implements their goals/targets and visions with their instrument; the choir.
b) The speaking and singing voice. The speaking voice is used for conveying instruc-tions and information. The choir director uses various expressions and voices in the dialogue with the choristers. The singing voice is perhaps the most commonly used tool by the choir directors. Call and response and imitation of the choir director’s instructions, using singing as a tool, is a frequently used form of communication.
c) Music-making and musical variation. The choir director’s ability to lead the group in choir-singing is used to practise the group’s joint expression and interpretation.
Making music is an immediate and direct tool for communication, for finding joint interpretations, and for concrete practice of various musical aspects. For example, exercises might include shifts between the choir director’s speaking voice and singing voice. Musical variation is used as a tool in exercises of various elements in a piece of music, for example text processing, quality of tune, intonation, part-singing, con-centration, timbre and movements. Variation is used to facilitate musical learning and music-making.
d) Gestures, respect, feedback and dialogue. Gestures are the choir directors’ tool to communicate with their instrument, the choir, through posture, gestures and direct-ing. Respect as a tool means that the choir directors deliberately adopt a respectful attitude towards their choristers and their individual abilities and potential to develop the choir-singing. Children and youths have the ability for fast musical learning, but do not understand irony, and should not be exposed to this. Feedback and dialogue are tools used to verbalise a joint/common understanding of the choir directors’ goals/
targets and visions for the choir and its work.
Pia Bygdéus
e) Vision and formulation of goals/targets. Vision is a tool in which the choir director works with ideas of how the choir should sound and the work needed to achieve this, as well as how the ideas are implemented in the choir. Vision is a long-term and general cultural tool, but does not have to be clearly defined. The group needs time and maturity to develop the vision. A vision is related both to experiences of something, and to a desire to communicate this experience to the children, which also includes spatial experiences. The formulation of goals and targets – in both inner and outer senses – is used by the choir director as a tool in the preparations and in the dialogue with the choir. The tool is concrete and welldefined in character. The goals/targets formulated can concern for example rehearsals, concert projects, choir days, trips and recordings, but also how the choir is supposed to sound concretely.
f) Piano and rhythm instruments. The piano is a tool used to transform and com-municate the choir directors’ musical intentions to the choristers. The potential of the piano as a tool for musical learning in choirs is dependent on the choir director’s ability to play the instrument, and to form character, style and phrasing by means of this. This is dependent on the choir director’s ability to play the instrument. Rhythm instruments are used by the choir directors to exemplify different musical styles and arrangements. Rhythm instruments as tools become an integrated part of musical learning in a choir; to experience pulse and rhythm physically.
g) Written music and paper. Written music and scores are used as tools to convey information from a composer/arranger of music pieces that can be monophonic or polyphonic. The knowledge of reading music is trained successively in the practice.
Paper is used as a tool to remember song lyrics, for information and other things the choir director wants to communicate to the choristers. The choir director uses notes and pens as tools in their continuous teaching to develop a joint/common under-standing of musical learning.
h) Boards, images, computer and discs. Boards with pens, including coloured pens, are used to convey text, images, notes and information as a stage in musical learning and memory training, and to stimulate fantasy and memory in storytelling, lyrics and the role of music in various contexts. Images are used to communicate and illustrate stories, musical content and/or lyrics, with the aim of engaging the choristers and stimulate fantasy, memory training and sense-experience. Computer and overhead, including screen, are used when the choir director wants to show texts or images to the whole group. Projecting text and notes on a screen is a complement to the papers and notes in the binder, and it creates concentration and a joint/common direction
Relational perspectives in the practices of choir directors
forward for the whole group. Discs and audio systems are used to play choir music, in role modelling and to illustrate goals/targets and visions in choir-singing. Shifting between different elements is common, in this case between recorded choir music as a tool, scores and dialogues about the music.
i) Binders, music stands and chairs. Binders are used by the choristers to compile their papers and notes. The choir director successively trains the Choristers in using the binder as a tool, and in using notes and paper in their choir singing. Music stands are used by the choir director, when standing in front of the choir. Music stands might also be used by the choristers when they stand in front of the group. Chairs have the function of giving the choristers a “home ground” in the choir. With a chair of their own, the choristers can feel safe in the room and have somewhere to work from and return to. The chair and the binder contribute to creating a tool defining the choris-ters’ own space in the room.
A tool can have several functions and be used in different ways. Choral conducting often requires a combination of tools. An analysis shows that the choir directors’ ways of working can be related to three factors: the choir director’s childhood/upbringing, education and practical experiences of choral conducting. An interesting observation is that several of the choir directors’ answers and statements indicate that they have not developed their knowledge during their formal education. They all say that they have had certain abilities before starting their education, or that they have developed their knowledge in their professional work, but they can rarely describe exactly where the tools emanate from. They present different opinions and descriptions of their university-level music studies. The ability to collect musical content and express underlying factors of a composition is dependent on the choir director’s own child-hood/upbringing and the surrounding environment.
Further development of tools as physical or psychological artefacts can increase the understanding of different levels of cultural tools. Such an analysis of primary, sec-ondary and tertiary artefacts can be used to study the categorisation of the working approaches and their tools as physical, bodily, intellectual, mental or linguistic entities.
The primary artefacts are physically concrete and manufactured/produced objects, whereas the secondary and tertiary artefacts are based on linguistic, intellectual, communicative, mental and discursive levels. All tools in a certain practice become tools with psychological aspects. They require a chain of thoughts, reasoning and a conclusion, which in practical choral conducting is done continuously in a choir rehearsal and in the choir director’s individual planning and preparation.
Pia Bygdéus
The views and images of choir directors can be seen as secondary artefacts from the perspective of secondary artefacts as reproduction of understanding and knowledge, which provides models for the choir director on how the choristers should think and act. Models become representations, which help the choir director to organise the